A Defections Conceptual Framework

• Defection is consequential — it shapes regime stability and transformation
• Yet we lack a unifying framework for understanding defection across contexts

Goal: Develop a framework to guide research and inform practitioners seeking to advance, defend, and repair democracy.

• Security forces → capacity for repression
• Media → regime narratives and public compliance
• Citizens → taxes, obedience, legitimacy
• Business elites → economic resources
• Legislators & bureaucrats → institutional functioning

Examples:

• Soldiers refuse to open fire on demonstrators
• Legislators resign or vote against their party
• Businesses give fewer campaign donations
• Party elites stop echoing leadership’s talking points
• People who once praised a dictator start mocking him in private

Defection is especially crucial in processes of nonviolent resistance, whose logic rests not on eliminating opponents but on shifting them to one’s side (Chenoweth and Stephan 2011).

• Loyalty Shifts = any movement along the spectrum
• Defection = any leftward movement beginning in active or passive support

1. Authoritarian and democratic backsliding regimes

• Repression makes defection far riskier than in healthy democracies (Davenport 2007)
• Different risk environments → different motivators
• Core motivation: understanding how to protect, repair, and advance democracy

2. The contemporary world (post–Cold War)

• Modern authoritarianism relies more on pseudo-democratic institutions, less on brute repression (Guriev and Treisman 2019)
• Democratic backsliding today is gradual, centered on executive aggrandizement under a veneer of legality (Bermeo 2016; Riedl et al. 2024)

These motivations interact:

• Material interests are easier to advance with moral justification
• Principled commitment is easier to sustain when materially beneficial

Key caution: Self-reported explanations are one data source among many, not definitive answers. People construct narratives to shape self and collective image (Nisbett and Wilson 1977).

• Breaking severs ties with the regime (visible, explicit)
• Binding maintains identity within regime while applying internal pressure (quiet, behind-the-scenes)
• Defection over time likely begins with binding → then breaking

• Corrupt business elites fear both losing benefits and opposition animosity (Sinanoglu 2025)
• Without viable post-defection pathways, defection is particularly rare (Langston 2002)
• Eliminating alternatives is a key strategy of authoritarian control

Implication for resistance campaigns:

• Create alternative institutions
• Negotiate exit plans
• Promote an inclusive vision of a post-regime future where potential defectors can see themselves

• Positive connections to individuals/groups with lower regime loyalty → reduced loyalty, increased defection probability
• When group boundaries blur (supporters see their group as including opponents) → in-group loyalty no longer implies regime loyalty

For resistance campaigns, defection is more likely when:

1. The campaign increases social connections to regime supporters
2. The campaign signals that dissent is more widespread and durable than previously believed

Tension: Social vs. material logics of sparking defection

Example: A business supporting an authoritarian leader

• Social approach: Patronize the business → build connections → social logic of appropriateness
• Material pressure approach: Boycott → cut connections → heighten material costs of loyalty

Campaigns are likely to be effective when they sequence social and material strategies — material pressure may be most effective when seen as a temporary break in a relationship that can be restored.

But authoritarianism can make defection all-or-nothing

• Authoritarian regimes punish even modest loyalty declines with severe repression
• This accumulates large numbers of false supporters (Kuran 1991)
• When they defect, they do so dramatically

Hypothesis: Defection scale is directly related to degree of authoritarianism. More open → small, frequent defections. More authoritarian → rare but large and abrupt.

Some considerations:

• Gain: Cross-pollination of insights across fragmented literatures
• Gain: Unified language for practitioners and researchers
• Loss: Context-specific dynamics may be obscured
• Loss: Risk of over-generalizing across diverse phenomena

Some possible areas to explore: